Key U.S. Union Battles in 'Bama and DC

Interesting article, even though it displays some serious illusions in Biden and the AFL-CIO. The real hope is that the battling 'Bamazon workers and others inside and outside the union movement can give rebirth to a militant, democratic, left-wing current that realizes it must go beyond what Biden and the union porkchoppers have in mind.

                           -- Gene McGuckin

Mar 12, 2021

Progressives With Their Act Together Are Getting a Little Dizzy

Organized labor has found renewed strength in Alabama and on Capitol Hill.

This week, as momentum continued to build behind some strategy to get the filibuster out of the way of further improvements in the national condition, the AFL-CIO weighed in on the side of doing away with it entirely, and one of the stated reasons the AFL-CIO gave marked an important moment in plainspoken politics.

The Workers First Agenda—investment, democracy and economic justice—is the agenda that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris ran on. It is the agenda that working people have fought for. And it is the agenda that our nation voted for. It is an agenda that cannot be delayed or denied. The very survival of our democratic republic is at stake.

And standing in its way is an archaic Senate procedure that allows the minority to block the majority—the filibuster. An artifact of Jim Crow. A creature of white supremacy. A procedure that was said to encourage robust debate but has turned into an instrument of government paralysis. A tool used by those seeking to preserve the social, economic and political status quo, that the AFL-CIO has long opposed, as a matter of principle as undemocratic and rooted in racism.

That the union felt comfortable stating this so baldly is a measure of the moment. In 2015, the AFL-CIO committed itself to confronting the bleaker racial episodes in its history. The fact that the filibuster as a tool of systemic racism is the union’s first rationale for killing it off can be seen as a product of that effort, especially since the precipitating factor for the statement itself is the PRO Act, recently passed in the House, a landmark piece of pro-labor legislation that does for organized labor what the American Rescue Act did for social-welfare law. From NPR:

Here are five provisions in the PRO Act:

1. So-called right-to-work laws in more than two dozen states allow workers in union-represented workplaces to opt out of the union, and not pay union dues. At the same time, such workers are still covered under the wage and benefits provisions of the union contract. The PRO Act would allow unions to override such laws and collect dues from those who opt out, in order to cover the cost of collective bargaining and administration of the contract.

2. Employe[r] interference and influence in union elections would be forbidden. Company-sponsored meetings — with mandatory attendance — are often used to lobby against a union organizing drive. Such meetings would be illegal. Additionally, employees would be able to cast a ballot in union organizing elections at a location away from company property.

3. Often, even successful union organizing drives fail to result in an agreement on a first contract between labor and management. The PRO Act would remedy that by allowing newly certified unions to seek arbitration and mediation to settle such impasses in negotiations.

4. The law would prevent an employer from using its employee's immigration status against them when determining the terms of their employment.

5. It would establish monetary penalties for companies and executives that violate workers' rights. Corporate directors and other officers of the company could also be held liable.

Of course, the filibuster stands in the way of passage in the Senate, just as it stands in the way of the For the People Act, which takes dead aim at voter-suppression laws, many of which are explicitly racist in their application and effect. In its demand for an end to the filibuster, the AFL-CIO’s statement ties these two measures together as twin weapons against intractable racial and economic inequality. And, for the first time in a long while, the President of the United States is staunchly, vocally pro-labor. He already has lined up with the striking Amazon workers in Alabama, the first serious field test of the renewed strength of organized labor. From The New York Times:

Nearly 30 years later, Mr. Richardson’s penchant for agitation has not faded. He’s one of the workers seeking to unionize an Amazon warehouse outside Birmingham, Ala., in a campaign that has targeted one of the world’s most profitable companies and its billionaire chief executive, and that has been invigorated by a wave of support from prominent politicians, including President Biden. “I couldn’t believe he said something,” Mr. Richardson said of Mr. Biden’s video message last week in which he affirmed workers’ rights and warned against corporate intimidation. “It matters. It eased minds that might be worried about losing their job.” Mike Foster, one of the lead organizers for the union, was less surprised. “We’ve been waiting on him,” he said.

That the president is, at the moment, the primary Democratic impediment to doing something about the filibuster has a lot of people waiting, too. Even Joe Manchin is allegedly open to making these guys hold the floor while engaging in this absurd ritual. Those of us unaccustomed to progressive politics having this much of its act together are getting a little dizzy.

[Top photo: Organized labor is in a moment of renewed power.  ERIK MCGREGOR GETTY IMAGES]